Dan walked tiredly out of the landing craft, dragging the severed head of the Orakh leader behind him while Jennifer fiddled with the oversized gauntlet. Unfortunately, the damaged armor and dead soldiers were far too heavy for the two of them to extricate on their own. Around him, the smell of smoke and ozone filled the air, evidence that his squad had been busy without him.
He sniffed the air again. Either that, or he was still smelling smoke from burning down the breeding chamber. He wasn’t entirely sure what creature was dwelling amongst the field of eggs, but Dan suspected it had a large part to play in the Orakh’s numerical superiority, so he did the only thing he could think of: blanketed the hidden chamber in Fireballs until his mana ran dry.
He shuddered. Dan could still hear the thing’s warbling screams, and he wasn’t sure that the horrible smell would come out of his clothing. As bad as the bayou was, the thick black smoke from the burning eggs carried the delectable aroma of a sewage barbeque. If it hadn’t been for the half-remembered stint in the tree with Jennifer, he probably would have lost his lunch in the main hall.
Whatever it was, they’d killed it. He didn’t know if the Orakh had another one stashed away nearby, but given the size of its chamber in comparison to the metal and stone shard they used as a ship, he doubted it.
Nearing the exit, he winced at the System timer showing -45 seconds. He’d hoped to get out a little early and clear their landing zone of Orakh so that the returning squads wouldn’t be stepping into a firefight. With any luck, either William or Abe had been able to extricate themselves and ensure that the squad would be able to launch on time. He didn’t hear gunfire, which Dan chalked up as a hopeful sign.
Stepping into the open, Dan froze, frowning. Ten of his team, including Abe, stood outside, their weapons trained on about twenty soldiers wearing camouflage. His gaze focused on the shortswords at their hips. He knew those swords.
“Shit,” he said quietly to Jennifer and drew his sword.
In the growing dark, he could barely make out their faces under the camouflage paint covering them, but it was enough to confirm his suspicions. The twenty in front of him were all soldiers from Colonel Bowman’s contingent, likely here for a purpose similar to his. They might lack the firepower of his powered armor, but they had magic and knew how to work as a team. Dan, Abe, and Jennifer might be able to hold their own, but the rest of the team would almost certainly take losses.
“Hey, guys.” Dan forced a smile on his face as he sauntered out of the landing craft. “It’s good to see old faces and all, but I think we managed to steal your thunder.” He threw the severed head onto the muddy dirt between the groups.
The soldiers looked at each other before returning their attention to Dan and Jennifer. Their posture wasn’t what he’d like to see from allies, even in a war zone. Almost every one of them was tense, their rifles barely not pointing at Dan’s team and their fingers barely off of their triggers.
“We’re just about to leave,” Abe’s voice broadcast from his armor. “Our last team is almost out of the ship. You can loot it to your heart’s content. At least for the moment, we’re all on the same side. No need to make this entire thing awkward.”
“Good to see you, Sergeant Steil.” One of them finally spoke, nodding a fraction of an inch toward Abe. “Wish I could agree with you, but we’ve got orders.”
“Orders?” Abe laughed, the sound harsh and discordant. “General Finch is in that ship behind me. We all know Colonel Bowman is a nutcase. If you’re following anything resembling the chain of command, you should join up with us when we leave here. Thrush pulled me out of Ibis’ lair when the asshole backstabbed us. He’s a decent guy, and we’re trying to put together a private military company to enforce some kind of order on all this shit.”
“If the orders were from Bowman…” The man shrugged slightly. “I’m not sure I see eye-to-eye with the Colonel, but he’s got a lot of men’s families under guard. It’s not that easy to turn your back on him.”
“Wait,” Jennifer interjected, frowning. “If the orders weren’t from Bowman, who in the hell is telling you to hold onto us?”
A flash of light illuminated the clearing as a thin, beautiful woman jumped off of one of Bowman’s boats, flickering tendrils of fire covering her. Dan’s fake smile faded.
“That would be me,” Merella glided into the center of the clearing, her spellshield glowing slightly. “Daniel.” She drew the word out, playing with the syllables before trailing off into an almost hiss.
“The last time we fought, you killed my nephew.” She smiled, a predatory thing meant to display her mouthful of sharp teeth. “When I challenged you to a duel, you cheated. Our battle was fairly invigorating, but others intervened. Finally, you tricked me and injected me with this accursed System you use to ape the powers of your betters.
“This time,” she continued, motioning to the fire team behind her, “we are evenly matched. Our fight will be one-on-one, and this time I will crush you. You see, Daniel.” Her smile became all teeth, the jagged mouth of a carnivore that wants you to know exactly what it is.
“Now that I have your system,” she tapped the side of her head, “I can learn magic just as fast as you. It has been a positive revelation. Even without a terribly large increase in mana, I’m easily twice as strong as the last time we fought, and back then, it took an entire squad and trickery to bring me down. Tell me, manling. What hope do you have today?”
“Hold on,” Dan raised a hand, waving it slightly. “I know you have a monologue to deliver and all that, but I wanted to know what the story was with Ibis. Honestly, I thought the army was going to kill you when you were handed over. How the hell did you end up on national TV next to Henry Ibis during that final address?”
“Why shouldn’t I humor you?” Merella asked, fire dancing over her fingertips. “I suppose I can consider your question some sort of last request.”
Dan rolled his eyes. He was officially fucking fed up with the constant derogatory attitudes. Silently, he accessed the System.
“Ibis snatched me out of your army’s custody.” A sneer crossed her face. “He kept asking me questions about the Tellask Empire, and when I didn’t answer, he used this accursed System to punish me. Eventually, I just started giving him answers. Most of them were wrong in subtle ways, and then he started talking about eating a mana crystal.”
“At first, I told him that it was nothing more than an expensive and painful way to die,” Merella remarked with a roll of her eyes. ”But he kept insisting that you survived. So, I made up an ancient elven secret that would allow him to survive the process. I even told him that it was a secret we reserved for noble scions. The fool lapped it all up then killed himself in front of your entire nation. A fitting punishment. My only regret is that I couldn’t do it again and again to him for the indignities he forced upon me.
“Now?” Fire gathered in her open hand as she raised it toward Dan. “Now, without his control, no one can stop me. Do you have any last words, Daniel?”
“Sleep,” he replied, toggling the system command. Immediately, her eyes went vacant as she fell bonelessly to the ground. He shook his head slowly, whistling. After all of that, she didn’t find a way to remove the System’s control mechanism.
Immediately, gunfire rang out. About half of the fireteam sprayed the power suits with fully automatic fire, doing little more than generating ricochets, while the other half dove to the ground.
Dan’s team returned fire, most of the .50 caliber slugs missing, but the pair that hit absolutely shredded their targets. One of Bowman’s men grabbed Merella, slinging her over his shoulder as they backed up toward one of the boats, laying covering fire.
The rest of the squad simply ignored their shots, their armor being all the cover they needed against M-16s. One by one, the soldiers fighting them fell as they drove the boat off. One of them was an initiate force mage and put up a barrier for just long enough to block a flurry of shots aimed at disabling the ship and deflecting a hastily thrown Fireball from Dan.
Then they fled, the entire battle taking maybe fifteen seconds from the moment the first shot was fired to their boat weaving in and out of the islands surrounding the landing site in an attempt to avoid fire. Five bodies lay on the ground, ripped open by the heavy-caliber weapons used primarily for fighting Orakh.
The other ten soldiers slowly put their guns on the ground and unstrapped their belts, letting their swords fall as well. For a second, no one spoke. Then the soldier that had originally been talking to Abe stepped forward.
“So,” he coughed sheepishly, hands in the air. “You guys still hiring? As bad as Bowman is, Merella is an absolute piece of work. I don’t want to spend my entire life fighting to defend this country and planet, only for Bowman to throw it all away as part of some weird powerplay.”
“What the hell was that, then?” Dan asked, confused as he hooked a thumb toward the retreating speedboat. “We do need to hire people who can fight, but I need it to be people I can trust. Half of you just tried to gun us down when you had the opportunity to join up.”
“They have families,” the soldier’s voice was grim. “If they turn tail, Bowman would do things to them. Pretty sure most of ‘em knew they were going to die pulling that stunt there, but dying in combat means he doesn’t torture your son. Things aren’t going all that well in Florida right now.”
Dan looked to Abe, who nodded through his battle armor.
“Sergeant Quinn is a straight shooter, boss,” he opined. “And I think he’s right. If they actually planned to fight us, they’d have closed the distance and tried to use those swords. That attack of theirs wasn’t the plan of someone trying to win a battle. Hell, those weren’t even the actions of someone trying to survive.”
“The more the merrier, I guess.” Dan glanced briefly over his shoulder as William led his team out of the landing craft. “Obviously, we’ll be watching you, but I’m glad to have some familiar faces on board.”
